The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Chapter Nine SO NOW WE KNEW.

Spencer Arrowood wondered if Constable Charlie Baker had known the truth back in 1832, and if he had ever been tempted to use that knowledge to save Frankie Silver.

Maybe the constable had known a lost cause when he saw one.

The six-hour drive to Nashville had never seemed longer, but at least the sheriff knew where he was going. Someone from Riverbend had faxed him directions with his final instructions for attending the execution (“no cameras, no recording devices . . .”). The sheriff did not play the radio for fear that every country song would sound like an omen. Instead he tried to concentrate on I-40, rather than on the jangle of possibilities that crowded his mind. He had finally received the information he’d asked LeDonne to find for him, and he had spent much of the previous evening making telephone calls and assembling the paperwork on the case. He was already weak from his injury, and he got little enough rest, but he told himself that he would not have been able to sleep anyhow.

It was 7A.M. By the time he reached Nashville, Spencer Arrowood would have nine hours to save a life.

From I-40W, he took the Robertson Road exit, turning right onto Briley Parkway, and onto Centennial Boulevard. The exit from Centennial put him in sight of “The Walls,” Tennessee’s Gothic-looking old prison, a nightmare in red brick, which had closed its doors to real prisoners in 1989, when the new penitentiary was completed. Now only movie stars in shapeless prison garb walked its corridors while the cameras rolled. The state rented out the old facility on a regular basis to film producers, so that the old building spent its declining years in a grotesque parody of its former existence. Now people only

pretended to die there.

The real maximum-security prison of the state of Tennessee did not look like Hollywood’s idea of a penitentiary. The new prison, Riverbend, would never look the part.

Centennial Boulevard led to Cockrill Bend Industrial Road, past the MTRC (Middle Tennessee Reclassification Center), where new prisoners were evaluated and assigned to various state facilities—and finally, on a wide bend in the Cumberland River, for which it was named, lay Riverbend itself. Riverbend Maximum Security Institution might have been a community college or a prosperous modern elementary school except for the high chain-link fences and the loops of razor wire surrounding the inner compound. Once past the repetitive, ironclad security of code words stamped on one’s hand and a succession of locked doors at short intervals, the place had a peaceful, rural look about it, as if the menace of the old days had been replaced by a brisk, impersonal efficiency. The one-story brick buildings were connected by concrete pathways set in a green lawn, and the view, glimpsed from between buildings, was of the bend in the river and the high wooded hill on the other side.

Spencer parked in the lot outside the main entrance and sat for a few moments in his car, collecting his thoughts and wishing he’d stopped for coffee somewhere along the way. It was past one o’clock, and he still hadn’t eaten anything. He couldn’t spare the time, he thought. The execution was scheduled for eleven o’clock that night. He wondered how persuasive he would have to be to get them to let him in early. The badge should do it, though; badges opened a lot of doors.

At the glass-covered reception booth, he had to give his name and show them the paperwork relating to his being summoned as a witness to the execution, but no one seemed to think it odd that he wanted to meet the warden. He told them that he was unarmed, and they gave him a clip-on red badge and told him to wait. After only a few minutes, he was taken down the left-hand hallway and ushered into the warden’s office, past an outer room containing a wall-sized aerial photo of Riverbend and its surroundings.

“I’d like to speak to the prisoner,” he said, as soon as the preliminary greetings were out of the way.

The warden raised his eyebrows. “You’re one of the witnesses, aren’t you, Sheriff?”

Spencer Arrowood nodded. “Wake is Mr. Harkryder’s home county. In fact, I was the arresting officer.”

“That was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

“Twenty years.”

“And you want to see him today?”

The sheriff nodded. “Today.” They both knew there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow for Fate Harkryder.

In the long silence that followed, Spencer studied the walls of the warden’s office. The room might have belonged to a college president or an official in a small-town bank except for the two framed drawings on the wall, childlike renderings of the prison, with little stick-figure guards manning large, carefully drawn weapons from the rooftop. The sketches were signed “James Earl Ray.”

“I see. You want to talk to Mr. Harkryder now.” The warden was watching him closely, waiting for the explanation to tumble out, but Spencer said nothing. Interrogation was an old game to him, easier than

chess.

“Fate Harkryder is going to die tonight, Sheriff,” the warden said at last. “And I want him to go peacefully. He’s been a good prisoner here. No trouble. Kept to himself. I owe him the courtesy of death with dignity. So if you have some old score to settle . . .”

“No. I’d just like to talk to him.”

“Well, it’s up to him. It’s his last day on earth, and a man ought to have a say in who he sees or doesn’t see at a time like this. You arrested him. You’ve come to watch him die. In his place, I don’t believe I’d relish the sight of you, Sheriff. But I’ll tell you what: I’ll send one of the guards in to ask Mr. Harkryder if he wants to see you or not, and we will both abide by his decision. Agreed?”

Spencer nodded. “Can I send a message with the guard?”

“All right,” said the warden. “A verbal one. Make it short. What do you want us to say to Mr. Harkryder?”

“Tell him I’ve been talking to Frankie Silver.”

The forty acres of Riverbend were nestled into the curve of the Cumberland River: fourteen buildings, encircled by a road and surrounded by two twelve-foot fences whose separate electronic systems for detection of movement and vibration secured the area. The fences were separated by a no-man’s-land of gravel and razor wire. There were no guard towers at the facility, but a twenty-four-hour mobile unit patrolled the perimeter. Only Building Seven, the administration building, lay outside the fences, but its sally port, the one entrance to the prison itself, was the focus of intense security.

A guard checked Spencer’s name badge and stamped his hand with the fluorescent code word of the day. No one was permitted in or out of the prison grounds without the code word on the back of his hand, illuminated by a sensor gun pointed at the spot by yet another guard.

The code words were short. They changed every day. Today’s code word was owl. Very appropriate, Spencer thought, studying the three glowing letters on his hand. The call of a hoot owl was considered a sign of death by the old-timers up home. The hoot owls should be calling tonight. There was death in the air.

A pleasant-looking man, who might have been the vice principal of an elementary school for all his lack of menace, accompanied the sheriff through the metal detector, past the checkpoint, through the two electric gates that opened consecutively, and into the compound.

Fate Harkryder had sent back word that he would see Sheriff Arrowood of Wake County. Spencer wondered if the name meant anything to him after all these years.

“How many inmates are here?” asked Spencer, who was tired of the silence.

“Six hundred and sixty-eight,” his guide answered. “Ninety-nine on death row. There are six units housing prisoners. That small building to your far left as we passed through the gates is the industry building, Two-A. There the inmates who are qualified to work put in their hours at assigned jobs.”

“Like what?”

“Printing. Data entry. Decals. If you buy a car in the state of Tennessee, the registration is sent to you by an inmate on death row. To your right is Building Nine: Food Services and Laundry.” They had reached the one-story brick building beyond the second electronic gate. “Building Eight,” said the guide. “We’ll check in again here.”

“What is Building Eight?”

“Security, and visitation. It looks like an airport waiting room.”

Spencer nodded. “I’ll see him in there?”

“No. The execution chambers are just behind the back wall of the visiting room.”

Spencer held up his hand to the electronic sensor. Owlflashed green in the light, and then vanished. Owls,thought Spencer. Once, when he was nine, Spencer and his older brother Cal had talked an old mountain man named Rattler into taking them owling, because they were still too young to hunt. Rattler walked the Arrowood boys across every ridge over the holler, teaching them to look for the sweep of wings above the tall grass in a field and to listen for the sound of the waking owl, ready to track his prey by the slightest rustle, the shade of movement. He taught them how to make owl calls, and they became so good at it that they could not tell if an owl was calling to them out of the forest or one of their own. Look out,Rattler had told them. When the owl calls your name, it means death.

Later on we became owls,Spencer thought. Cal went to Vietnam and died in a jungle of screeching birds, and Spencer grew up to be a lawman, hunting prey of his own by the slightest sound or by one false move. A lot of people had heard him call their name.

He stared at the tile floor, the institutional cinder-block walls, and at the display case of carved ship models made by inmate craftsmen. “I thought Mr. Harkryder would be on death row.”

“He was housed in Unit Two. It’s directly behind this building. But in the days before his execution, a prisoner is moved to a holding cell in the back of Building Eight. We’ve never done an execution before at Riverbend, but the procedures have all been outlined so that we would be ready.”

They walked through the door and into the empty visitation hall, past a series of functional sofas and chairs of plastic and steel arranged in conversational groupings so that twenty or thirty sets of visitors could have a few feet of privacy with the inmate they came to see. They stopped at another metal door on the back wall. The guide unlocked it. “There’s another way in,” he said, “but I thought we’d go this way, since Mr. Harkryder is already in his cell. This is where you’ll be tonight.”

The witness room. Rows of metal conference-room chairs facing a plate-glass window covered by blinds. Straight in front of them was another door. The pleasant-looking man pushed it open. “You might as well see it now, Sheriff.” He stepped over the threshold and stood aside so that Spencer could look into the bright, empty room.

Almost empty.

A plain wooden chair sat in the center of the room.

The guide motioned him to the door on the left wall. “This leads to the hallway,” he said. “You know: the last mile. The other way is the control room, where the machinery is located, and there’s also a room there for the equipment of the prison telephone system. Would you like to see it?”

The guide had given this tour many times before, and an execution had never happened yet, so perhaps the air of unreality about this place still lingered for him. Spencer declined the invitation to see the other rooms. There was too little time.

They emerged in a tiled corridor that reminded Spencer of the Sunday school building of a modern church. The open door on the left revealed a small kitchen. You could have had a wedding reception or a Scout meeting in the bright empty room beyond—except for the wooden chair in the center.

A few paces past the kitchen doorway, Spencer saw the only three barred cells in Riverbend. The ordinary prisoners’ rooms had blue metal doors that they could lock with their own keys. Building Four, where the troublemakers were kept, had solid cell doors with pie flaps for food to be taken to the prisoner, and bars enclosing the various areas of that building as a security precaution, but no cells like these. These were jail cells, much more familiar to a county sheriff than to a modern prison guard.

Inside the last barred cell, a man in jeans and a blue cotton work shirt sat on the metal bunk, writing on a yellow legal pad. An armed guard sat on a folding chair in the hall, watching the cell with an air of uneasy boredom.

Spencer stepped up to the bars. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said.

Fate Harkryder looked up. His hair was gray now, and there were lines in his face, but his eyes were unchanged. He set aside the legal pad and walked over to the bars.

The guide touched Spencer’s arm. “I’ll be at the end of the hall,” he said. “Don’t be long.” The guard in the metal folding chair contrived to look as if he were oblivious to the scene in front of him.

“I needed to talk with you,” said Spencer.

The prisoner nodded. “Frankie Silver,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about her in years. My daddy’s sister married a man from over in Mitchell County. My Uncle Steve. He used to sing that old song sometimes when he wasn’t too drunk to remember the words. This dreadful, dark and dismal day/ Has swept my glories all away. . . .” Fate Harkryder smiled bitterly. “Sure fits the mood for today, don’t it?”

“I think so,” said the sheriff.

“And then they can play ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home.’ That’s a real tearjerker.”

“I didn’t really come here to talk about music.”

“Yeah, I know. You came for the show, didn’t you? You want to make sure they kill me. You’re the one who put me here. You think I don’t remember that? A man don’t forget much in twenty years if there’s nothing to look at but cinder block.”

“I came because I finally figured out the Harkryder case,” said Spencer. “Thanks to Frankie Silver. For a hundred and sixty-four years, people have been wondering what Frankie’s father meant when he stopped her gallows speech by saying: Die with it in you, Frankie.When I figured that out, I knew what was bothering me about your situation.”

“Am I supposed to care what you think?”

“Well, I think you should get clemency.”

Fate Harkryder shrugged. “Sign a petition then. There are dozens of them. The Pope sent a nice letter to the governor on my behalf, and the anti–death penalty people are staging a vigil tonight, I hear. Candles and everything. A couple of movie stars have sent faxes to me pledging their support, only they’re not exactly sure what it was I’m supposed to have done. Seems like all of a sudden nobody wants me to die. I wonder if that’s because they’re all pretty sure it’s going to happen.”

“It doesn’t have to happen,” said Spencer. “Not if you tell them what really happened that night on the mountain.”

“I thought you knew that, Mr. Arrowood. You seemed mighty sure of yourself at the trial.”

“I was sure. But I was a kid then. So were you.”

“And now you know different?”

“Now I do.”

“So you came charging up here to save my life, did you?”

“I’m willing to try. Tell the truth about the Trail Murders. You can stop this.”

Fate Harkryder smiled. “Oh, we’re already trying to stop it, Sheriff. That’s what lawyers are for. Allan is at the governor’s office right now, trying to get in to see him to plead for a stay. I forget the grounds. Doesn’t matter. Whatever comes into his head, I guess. And the other one, that would be Justin, I believe—hell, they’re both kids—Justin got on a plane this morning and flew to Washington to talk to the Supreme Court. I’m famous, Mr. Arrowood. Everybody has heard of me.”

“Right. But nobody has heard of Tom and Ewell, have they?”

Fate Harkryder stared up at him for one frozen moment. Then he shrugged and turned away. “I guess they haven’t,” he said casually. “The black sheep of the family gets all the attention.”

“Not this time. I’ve been doing some checking. At the time of the Trail Murders, you were a minor. Your brothers were both over eighteen. You had no criminal record. They did. So—what did they tell you when you got arrested for the killings? Take the rap, Lafayette. You’re underage. You’ll do a couple of years at the most. Just don’t implicate your brothers. You can save us. Just don’t ever tell.Was it something like that?”

Fate Harkryder shrugged. “It’s your story, mister.”

Spencer nodded. “ Die with it in you, Frankie.It’s the same old story. Mountain families stick together, no matter what. You were willing to die to keep from betraying them.”

Fate Harkryder said nothing.

“That’s why the blood at the crime scene matched yours. Same family. Nowadays, with DNA, we could have got a closer match, but back then the results were less exact. We were close, but not close enough.”

Silence.

“Tom and Ewell did it, but they gave you the jewelry to sell. All the evidence that linked you to the crime scene would also link them. Brothers. Same blood type. All secretors. There are just two things I don’t know: Why did your brothers kill those two kids with such violence, and why didn’t you ever tell the truth about what happened—especially after you were sentenced to death?”

Fate Harkryder was staring at a blank wall, where a window ought to have been but wasn’t. Somewhere beyond the cinder block was the river and an elm-covered hill. The hill would be deep green now, a canopy of trees leading you on from ridge to ridge, as if the green wave of forest would carry you home. He sighed. “Who’d believe me, Sheriff?”

“I would. I ran a records check on your two brothers. I wanted to see what had become of them in the last twenty years.”

“We don’t keep in touch.”

Spencer felt the sweat prickle on his neck. I’m more nervous than he is,he thought. Maybe it’s because he’s been fighting this for twenty years, and I’ve just begun.

He said: “I ran the records check through the TBI. At the time of the Trail Murders, both your brothers had two felony convictions apiece. One for shoplifting, and one for robbing a convenience store.”

“Shoplifting?” The prisoner’s smile was ironic.

“Petty larceny was a felony in Tennessee at that time. We had another funny little law back then, too. The Career Criminal Act. Remember that? Three felony convictions, and you’re ineligible for parole. Forever. The law was repealed a few years later, but at the time of those murders, your brothers knew that if they were convicted of that crime, they would get either the death penalty or life in prison with no hope of release.”

Fate Harkryder sighed and looked away. Spencer wondered if he was remembering with regret a long-ago conversation with his brothers, or if he was just tired of talking about it. Twenty years of prison coupled with twenty years of legal battles would make a man weary of life.

“It must have seemed like a reasonable request at the time,” the sheriff said. “Your brothers can’t afford a conviction. You have no criminal record, and you’re only seventeen. When you get caught with the jewelry, they tell you to say nothing about what really happened. Take the rap if you have to. You’re a kid. It’ll only be a few years. You can do it. But to everyone’s surprise, you got the death penalty. And then you were stuck, weren’t you?”

“I said I wasn’t guilty.”

“All prisoners say they’re not guilty. We caught you with the victim’s personal effects. You must have known that if you didn’t explain that, you’d be convicted.” Spencer found himself thinking of Frankie Silver. We caught you in a lie. Why didn’t you tell us what really happened?Fate Harkryder didn’t tell, for the same reason Frankie Silver had kept silent. Because we’re Celts and mountain people,he thought. We don’t trust authority figures, and we haven’t since the Romans landed in Britain and started calling the shots. We never think the law is going to be on our side, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, we’re right. Who am I to change that today?

“So you took the blame for your brothers’ crime, and you’ve spent your entire adult life in prison,” he said. “What a waste.”

“Yeah, well, I was seventeen years old. What the hell did I know?”

“You learned fast, though, didn’t you? The first time you got raped in your cell, I bet you were real sorry you had been so noble.”

The condemned man shrugged. “You get used to anything. I survived.”

“They weren’t worth it, you know. Those brothers of yours. I ran a records check on them before I came here. You may not want to know what happened to them, but I did.”

“Found out, did you? That must have been a thrill.”

“I don’t know what I was hoping for: whether I wanted them to turn out to be notorious serial killers or missionaries to China. I guess I wanted them to be entirely better than you are or utterly worse. They were neither, of course. Tom is on parole in Kentucky for kidnapping and armed robbery, which makes me wonder what else he’s done that he hasn’t been caught at. And Ewell wasn’t on the computer, but we found him through Motor Vehicles. Your brother Ewell is a drunk who lives on welfare and odd jobs in Knoxville. I doubt his liver will last much longer.”

“Tom and Ewell,” said Fate Harkryder thoughtfully. “I haven’t really paid them much mind in years. In my head, they’re still twenty-something. The letters from home don’t mention them.”

“Didn’t you care what became of them? You gave up your life for them.”

“I cared at first, but . . . hell: Prison is another country. It’s like my old life was another incarnation—that it was me back in those days, and yet not me, so none of the people and places from before are real somehow. Tom and Ewell are no more real to me now than people I saw in movies when I was a kid. Maybe they’re less real. I still see John Wayne every now and then.”

“You don’t have to keep on lying,” said Spencer. “Let’s just call a press conference and tell what really happened.”

For one moment something flickered in the prisoner’s eyes. He took a deep breath. “Have you got any new evidence? DNA?”

“No. All the physical evidence is gone. All we have is crime scene photos and witness interviews, but they haven’t changed since the trial.”

“And what about Tom and Ewell? Will they back you up?”

Spencer looked away. “No. I called them last night. Ewell swears he’s innocent, and Tom hung up on me. You’re on your own.”

“So it would just be my word and your hunch against a twenty-year-old murder conviction that has withstood decades of appeals?”

“Yes.”

Fate Harkryder shook his head with amused disbelief. “So you call your press conference and announce all this, and then what, Mr. Arrowood? You and me go out for a few beers? It won’t work like that. Nobody will pay us any mind. My deathis news, not my legal arguments. Stanton will shout us down. The journalists will assume it’s a stunt of some kind. People will think I’m a coward, and they’ll sure as hell wonder what yourproblem is.” The spark in his eyes was gone. He looked away again, barely interested in the conversation anymore, barely listening.

“But you have to try,” said the sheriff. “You can’t let yourself be executed for a crime just to protect

your brothers.” “It isn’t about them anymore. Don’t you see that? It doesn’t matter why I came here, or whether I deserved it. Twenty years are gone. Who I was is gone. All that’s left is a tired old man who doesn’t want to be in here another day.”

“But we could get you a good lawyer and ask for a pardon.” “I wouldn’t get one. I’m a poor, dumb hillbilly, Sheriff. Why should anybody bother to keep me alive?

They’d just change the sentence to life and let me stay in here and rot. I had the jewelry on me, remember? I’m not just an innocent bystander. Charles Stanton is never going to let anyone forget that.” “At least you wouldn’t die.” “You don’t get it, do you? I’ve been dead for twenty years. I just want to get out of here and be done

with it. Tonight.” “In a pine box?” “Whatever.” “Well, if you won’t try, at least I can. I don’t want you on my conscience. I have seven hours. I can go

and see the governor—”

Fate Harkryder shook his head. “I want it to be over, Sheriff. It’s too late. I’m tired of this life. Just let it happen, will you? Consider this a dying man’s last wish. Just let it happen.” “But—” Fate Harkryder tapped on the bars. “Visitor’s leaving!” He called out to the guard. In a loud, cheerful

voice meant to be overheard, he said, “Thanks for coming by, Sheriff. Wish me luck tonight, okay?” Spencer Arrowood turned to go. “Mr. Arrowood! There is something you can do for me.” Fate Harkryder flashed his mocking smile, but

his eyes shone. “I got nobody else to ask. But it’s my last wish, and I hope you’ll oblige me.” “What is it?” “When it’s over, I want you to take me home.”